had come to their ears, the
sound of reeds and brasses.

"Thar's the band now!" exclaimed Aaron Craybill. "Knight Templar, too!
They're goin' over to the hall to practice for the funer'l. Come on
ahead! Hurry, Silas!"

Down the street, audible also through the open windows of Judge
Henderson's office, came the music. Jerome Westbrook had hastened from
his duties on the coroner's jury only to assume his labors as leader of
the Spring Valley Silver Cornet Band; and as it was the duty of that
band to head the procession of the Knights Templar in the funeral march
of Joel Tarbush, himself a brother of the order, it seemed that a
certain rehearsal in the infrequent effort of playing under march was
needful on this Sabbath day.

Slow-paced, with swords reversed and even step, with eyes looking
neither to the right nor to the left, following the music of the wailing
horns, the muffled tapping of the drums, it came now into the civic
center of the town, this solemn procession. At its head walked Saunders,
master in the order, his opportunity now at hand; and behind him, in
full regalia, came many others, all the leading citizens of this
community, the pillars of the church, the props of the business
structure of this village, the leaders and formers of its customs and
its social order; all these anxious that the appearance of the secret
order in public should be in all ways above reproach, even at cost of
this quasi-public rehearsal. Joel Tarbush dead was receiving more
tribute than ever had Joel Tarbush living.

In accordance with ritual or custom, after the actual march to the tomb,
the musicians must render that selection which has spoken for so many
hearts bowed down in weight of woe; but Jerome Westbrook knew that his
men needed practice on Pleyel's Hymn; so they gave it now tentatively,
in advance, as they passed through the public square on the way to the
hall. To the strained senses of Aurora Lane, still sitting with Anne in
the office where they had lingered, the wailing of the music seemed a
thing unbearable. She caught her hands to her ears.

"Oh, God!" she whispered. "Oh, God! If only they would not."

The white, sad-faced young woman at her side took her trembling hand in
her own. "It will pass," said she. "Everything passes. You have been
brave all these years. I ought to be brave too! even now--after what
you've told me."

"And I never knew you," said Aurora Lane after a time. "Not many women
have ever s